Documents appear to implicate State Dept. in cover-up on Clinton emails

The U.S. State Department waited over a year before producing emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server despite 17 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, “in August 2013, State Department officials were aware of 17 FOIA requests relating to requests for Clinton correspondence, including four that ‘specifically mention emails or email accounts.’

‘These new emails suggest that the Obama State Department knew about the Clinton email problem at least three years but covered it up.’

“Despite the large number of FOIA requests and growing concern among top agency officials, the State Department did not formally request that the former secretary of state produce the emails on the clintonemail.com server until October 2014.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that “these new emails suggest that the Obama State Department knew about the Clinton email problem at least three years but covered it up. Any criminal investigation of the Clinton email scandal must include officials in the Obama administration.”

The State Department documents were obtained by Judicial Watch under court order in a March 2016 FOIA lawsuit against the agency for all records “about the processing of a December 2012 FOIA request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW]” (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:16-cv-00574)).In December 2012, CREW filed a FOIA request with the Department of State for “records sufficient to show the number of email accounts of or associated with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.” In May 2013, the agency responded that “no records responsive to your request were located.”

Earlier this year, the State Department Office of Inspector General concluded that the “no records response” sent in response to this request was “inaccurate and incomplete.”

Included among the 17 FOIA requests was a Judicial Watch lawsuit “seeking records pertaining to possible conflicts of interest between the actions taken by Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and Bill Clinton’s activities.”

The lawsuit produced 276 pages of internal State Department records “revealing that within two days of the deadly terrorist attack on Benghazi, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, the president of Libya’s National Congress, asked to participate in a Clinton Global Initiative function and ‘meet President Clinton.’

In a 2014 joint expose with the Washington Examiner Judicial Watch’s Chief Investigative Reporter Micah Morrison reported: “[F]ormer President Clinton gave 215 speeches and earned $48 million while his wife presided over U.S. foreign policy, raising questions about whether the Clintons fulfilled ethics agreements related to the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.”

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, State Department officials charged with reviewing Bill Clinton’s proposed speeches “did not object to a single one.”

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